Changing Entity Type - Answers Ramifications

Search Best Practices - Search Configuration
1

What are the implications of changing the Entity Type for entities that are already live on an Answers Experience?

For example, if I want to change location entities to the Healthcare Facility entity type (for a listings launch), I assume that will impact the current configuration of the Answers Experience for the locations vertical.

Is there a best practice when changing entity types when an experience is already live? Or is it just better to leave them as is?

2

Hey Andrew,

The implications of changing the entity type will depend on how the locations vertical is configured. For example, if you have a saved filter on the locations vertical that only includes the location entity type, that would need to be changed.

In addition, the searchable fields on your vertical could potentially cause issues since different entity types may have different fields available. Make sure to check your searchable field configuration to ensure no unexpected behavior will come from a change in entity type.

Generally speaking, I’d just make sure to closely review any aspect of the backend configuration that relates to the locations vertical and check to make sure there isn’t anything entity-type-specific that will break if you change the type to be Healthcare Facility for the entities already live on the experience.

Hope this helps!
DJ

3

Hi Andrew,

I know you didn’t ask directly on this but I would also consider and be aware of the analytics impact as you make this change over. Some insights rely on entity type or entity ID so just wanted to flag for you.

Alyssa

4

Hi DJ and Alyssa,

I wanted to follow up on this post as I had a similar question - I was wondering if you had any insight into what would be the best practice, given that I already have a live Answers experience and Analytics based on Entity ID and Entity Type.

  1. Switching out the Entity Type, but recreating all custom fields in the new entity type and checking the backend configuration
  2. Exporting all relevant entities and recreating them as the new entity type, which would not affect the live Answers experience and I would need to update the filter for Answers when ready

It seems like Option 2 would be the safest option with the live Answers, but in terms of Analytics, would Option 1 be better?

Thank you!
Jamie

5

Hi Jamie,

I think the safest option will be Option 2. There are limitations with switching Entity Type, such as the inability to switch a custom entity type to a built-in entity type, and there is also the chance that in changing the entity type, some of the field mappings could change which could have downstream effects on the live Answers experience.

For Option 2, there are a few steps to keep in mind:

  1. Create the new entity type.

  2. For each custom field you want to use on the new entity type, go into the field itself and edit the Field Availability to include the new entity type. This will help avoid any issues when re-uploading all of the entities with the new type.

  3. Export all of the entities you want to change, edit the entity type and entity ID columns and upload all of the new entities.

  4. Once you have checked to make sure all of the new entities were created as expected and are ready to replace the old entities, you can start changing the search experience and associated analytics.

  5. Update the vertical/saved filter to reference the new entity type. I would then click “Edit in JSON” in the backend to open up the JSON editor and do a quick CMD+ F search for the old entity type just to see if it shows up anywhere for you to replace.

  6. The frontend repo most likely doesn’t explicitly call out the entity type, but I’d do a quick run through of the frontend just to see if anything seems to have changed with how the vertical is showing up.

  7. For analytics, I think you’ll have to go in and update any reports relying on specific entity IDs or the old entity type to reference the new type and entity IDs.

Hope this helps!
DJ